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Kleene Star

Thu, Aug. 4th, 2005, 05:03 pm How Rude!!!

So, I was pretty excited about this ludium, the game that's also a conference that's also a game. It sounded like a lot of fun and I guessed a lot of really interesting people would be there.

Well, guess what? A lot of really interesting people will be there - on Thursday and Friday, by invitation only. And what did the rest of us poor shlubs rate? An invitation to come on Saturday and pay to watch the participants present the work they did at the fun part of the conference. That's right, folks. These geniuses expect us not only to come out to Indiana for a single day in order to play B-listers, but they also expect us to pay through the nose for the privilege. $500 for one day? What the hell is this?

Look, there's nothing wrong with having a closed-list conference. I've been to a few and been not-invited to a few. It's usually not a big deal. This, on the other hand, seems calculated to rub the attendees' superiority in the faces of those who didn't rate an invite. It is mean, and nasty, and guaranteed to piss off the scholars, builders and researchers who didn't make the A-list.

It looks like they don't want people to come. The attendee list read very white bread male (mostly from their own school as well), which sort of flies in the face on their claim of investigating social justice interests. Also, it's in Indiana, that alone screams 'we want no one here'. I can understand it might be hard to organize something like this with people that would be all over the place, but your vitriol is still well-placed.

Jess, the problem is that you are in the wrong business. Obviously, organizing these things is a great way to clean up.

That said, I remember the dot-com days when a 2 day seminar on somebody's pet garbage theory of 37-73 cycles (which meant that a 37% loss is ALWAYS followed by a 73% gain - no matter the context or the circumstances) cost $2999 to attend.